Time Cast Forth My Mortal Creature
by What Ithacas Mean
Summary: 24. Teagan. Redcliffe Castle.
1. The Stranger In The Road

_Some very short sketches._

_Standard disclaimers._

* * *

**1. The Stranger in the Road.**

* * *

_Tabris:_

He's a human man. Another bloody shem, standing in the middle of the filthy alienage street like he owns it. He wears no tabard, but his armour is well-mended, worn with use: it broadens his shoulders, makes him - already tall - seem even taller. The longsword sheathed at his belt has seen hard use.

And if he wears patience like a cloak, if his expression is mild and even friendly, it doesn't make him one whit less dangerous.

Kallian Tabris is dangerous, too, but if she has to fight him, she doesn't think she'll win.

But if she has to, she'll still try.

It's what she does.


	2. The Road Leads Ever On

**2. The Road Leads Ever On.**

* * *

_Duncan:_

She reminds him of the wolf he saw as a young man, penned in a cage at Highever docks to be shipped alive to Antiva. It watched him with the same feral intensity, the same patient watchfulness. He remembers how she looked when she came back from the arl's estate - hollow, bitter, bleak - and her silences prickle the hairs on his nape.

She learns quickly, drinking in knowledge like water. Her disinterest in the Grey Wardens matters very little to him. She understands it is necessary for her to join the order. That's enough: he has no time for history lessons. He must take a city-raised elf, and turn her into a soldier who can survive in the wild. That cannot wait for the Joining. The nightmares tell him there will be no time, after. Not in a Blight.

After. If she dies, it will be one more name to add to the bitter list etched in his soul, the litany that haunts him in the dark watches of the night. Kallian Tabris, of Denerim, elf. I killed you.

If he thought she would flinch from that, it might taste less bitter in his throat.

He does not think she will flinch.


	3. Waters Blown By Changing Winds

**3. Waters Blown By Changing Winds**

(from Rupert Brooke, _1914 IV: The Dead_)

* * *

Ostagar

_Tabris:_

"You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together," the not-exactly-a-Templar says.

He reminds her of Soris.

A shem - _another _shem, for the world is full with them. And his crooked hopeful grin reminds her, sharp as the new sword at her hip, of all the bridges she's burned behind her. It's Soris's sense of humour, the same wry determination to joke even at the gallows' foot, but armoured in polished, well-used mail and quirking his smile from a fair, too-handsome shem face.

Laughter can be defiance, too. She bares her teeth, says, "Has anyone ever told you you're a very strange man?" and clasps his proffered hand.

The only way out is through. And it's time to start finding allies she can trust at her back.

It'd be easier if he were an elf.


	4. Out Between The Lines

**4. Out Between The Lines**

_(God's eyes are dim, His ears are shut.)_

_One cruel backhand sabre-cut—_

_...And look, spike-helmeted, grey, grim,_

_Goliath straddles over him._

(from Robert Graves, _Goliath and David_)

* * *

Korcari Wilds

_Tabris:_

When Alistair first introduces them, the shem knight stares at her as though he's never seen an elf before.

To be fair, he's probably never seen an elf with a _sword_.

She's not inclined to be fair. She's seen men like Ser Jory of Redcliff before, big men and boastful, fools' certainties lacquered over their fear. Out here in the Wilds, wind rustling in marsh-grass and odd sounds plinking in stinking water, mud dragging their ankles down and cold rain chilling the sweat beneath their armour, it's plain to see he's never been tested before. Not to the ragged edge of terror and exhaustion, where the world narrows to each next breath, next step, next _enemy_, where you pick up your pace and your courage despite gnawing pain and the wet heat of blood on your wrist. Where if you fall, there's no one there to pull you out of the way of the axe.

Stupid shem still thinks he's going home again.

But when he slips in the melee-chaos and the fetid mud, she slams a lunging hurlock back with her shield and stands over him savage-grinning till he rises, holding back the 'spawn.

He'll never hold alone before a charge: doesn't matter. Right now the stupid shem and his skill with that monstrous stupid greatsword are _useful_, and that makes him worth keeping alive.

If he lives long enough, he might even grow a spine.


	5. Lean and Haggard, Rough Round The Eyes

**5. Lean and Haggard, Rough Round the Eyes**

(from Augusta Davies Webster, _Medea in Athens_)

* * *

_Korcari Wilds_

_Morrigan:_

'Tis a strange band Flemeth set her to meet, and no mistake.

A golden-haired fool of a Templar - though no fool a sword in his hands - and a short ferret-faced dark youth; an elf and a nervous knight whose voice cracks on the word _witch._

The youth and the knight are of hardly any consequence. The Templar-Warden might know enough to be dangerous: he knows enough, at least, to keep his eyes on her face. The elf -

The elf has a thief's hands and a wolf's face, and a quiet, wary watchfulness. It's her eyes Morrigan notices first, dark and patient, with a calm at odds with her youth and the lines hunger's etched around her mouth. A pretence of calm, surely? No one but she and Flemeth should be at ease in the Wilds, with the 'spawn so close at hand.

Taunting the menis briefly amusing, but the elf's gaze does not waver. There's a sharpness to it that makes her feel uncomfortably like prey. _Nonsense. _I _am the predator here._

But even a trapped rat can bite, and Flemeth would be... not best pleased_..._ if Morrigan _exceeded _her instructions.

"Tell me your name and I shall tell you mine," she says. And adds, with calculated sarcasm: "Let us be civilised."

"Kallian Tabris." The elf seems, by the men's body language, to be the dominant bitch in their pack. The right hand she offers to clasp is deft and strong, seamed with old white scars and newer ones still fading. A slight, ironic smile. "A pleasure to meet you."

_More foolish touching! _Morrigan grimaces, but accepts the handclasp.

It is only later - much, much later, when the screams of dying men echo from the walls of Ostagar and raven-formed, she watches the Templar guard the calm-eyed elf's bare back in the courtyard of the Tower of Ishalle as Kallian Tabris cuts down darkspawn with grim, measured ferocity - that she stops resenting Flemeth's desire to keep the Wardens alive.

The quiet elf is _fascinating._


	6. Deep Wounds Deepening

**6. Deep Wounds Deepening**

(from Wilfred Owen, _The Show_)

* * *

Lothering

_Alistair:_

Kallian Tabris is a _thief._

Stripping the dead, that's one thing. Dead men have no need for coin, and with the Blight a black nightmare in his dreams, he rather doubts their families will ever recover their bodies or their effects. _Someone _should make use of them.

That thought leads, painfully, to Duncan, and he pushes it away.

But when Tabris slings her shield over her shoulder and turns her back on the odious little merchant - who, miracle of miracles, she's actually bullied into acting like a human being, and he thought _that _not half as likely as finding Orlesian blue cheese sprouting under a hedgerow - he sees a brief glitter in her palm before it disappears into her beltpouch and returns, scarred, calloused and empty.

"You're a _thief_," he hisses, half in outrage, half in shock - half expecting a guardsman's hand descending on his shoulder like Cook's when he'd nicked cakes from the monastery kitchen as a boy and that's too many halves by far - "I _saw_ you. You _stole_ from that nasty little man -"

"Shut up, unless you want us both hanged," she says, quiet and flat. The tired bitterness in her glance rocks him back a step, and the sour half-twist to her lips when she adds, "Or, no. Me, they'd hang for sure. You, they might just flog."

For Duncan's sake, he has to try. "The honour of the Grey Wardens -"

"When you've gone three days on an empty belly, Alistair, I hope _honour _will be a comfort to you." She lengthens her stride so that he has to rush to keep up. (And Maker, how so slight an elf can walk so _fast_ he can't fathom, it just doesn't seem _fair_.) Low, so low he almost doesn't hear it, and vicious: _"I can't say it ever was to me."_

"Your mouth is attracting flies, Templar," Morrigan murmurs in his ear some moments later, horribly near. "Close it."

He shudders, hastens to catch up to Tabris. Avoids her eye.

_Oh, Duncan. Why did you have to go and die?_


	7. With Scornful Thunder

**7. With Scornful Thunder**

* * *

_"..and Hell thereunder_

_Dies in her ultimate mad fire,_

_And darkness falls, with scornful thunder_

_On dreams of men and men's desire."_

_- Rupert Brooke, "The Call"_

_#_

* * *

_#_

Dane's Rest, Lothering

_Leliana:_

"Mercy." The elf turns the word over in her mouth like the syllables of some foreign tongue. Her naked sword rests steady against the soldier's throat. Her glance is dark, intent and very steady. "Do you imagine, Sister, that we would receive any mercy at _their _hands?"

The taproom is silent. It is a long time since Leliana has been accused of naivety. She wipes her sword on the end of her robe and sheathes it, ignoring her trembling hands. Two of the teyrn's soldiers still live: the one with the elf-Warden's sword at his throat, and another, curled up around a thigh opened to the whiteness of bone and moaning through his teeth, the _other _Warden standing over him. The charnel-odour of a slaughterhouse mingles with the scent of sweat and beer.

_If you only knew, Warden. If you only knew -_

Killing had been as easy as ever. It shakes her a little, how easily she falls back into seeing _men _as _obstacles._ As sheep to the slaughter.

_Maker help me._

She swallows, knowing to the Wardens it will look like nerves, not self-revulsion. Makes her tone as soothing as she knows how. "You have no need to kill them. What harm will it do to let them go?"

"No _need_?" Bared teeth. A feral expression, but there's humour in it. "What do you think, Alistair? Have we killed enough men today?"

"I think they've probably better things to do than try to kill us again," the blond Warden says, thoughtfully. "Like _run away_. Don't you think?"

"There was death enough at Ostagar," the elf agrees. She lifts her sword, steps back. There is contempt in her eyes, and cold savagery in her voice. "Run back to your master, little man. Tell Loghain the Blight is his enemy, not the Wardens." Raising her voice as the soldier scrambles to his feet: "Someone help this bastard get his friend on a horse!"

The soldier staggers out, carrying his bleeding companion with the aid of one of the patrons. The innkeeper gestures, and two elves start dragging the bodies out of the taproom. The patrons appear to give a collective shrug and go back to their drinks and their fear. Soldiers fighting is nothing Lothering hasn't seen before.

The elf-Warden turns her dark, level gaze on Leliana and says, very quiet and cold, "Now, Sister. Why don't you tell us who you are, and what brought you to our aid?"

_Maker help me_, she thinks again.

It takes every ounce of her skill to pretend she is not afraid.


	8. A Hand Cut In Battle

**8. A Hand Cut In Battle**

.

* * *

**.  
**

"_As regards feeling pain, like a hand cut in battle,  
consider the body a robe you wear."_

_-Jalal-ud-din Rumi, "Light Breeze"_

_.  
_

* * *

#

Lothering

_The Sten:_

A man cannot live without his soul.

The breeze smells of death and fear, and faintly of a sour, unfamiliar _wrongness_. The village is crowded with frightened fools, huddled, uncertain, waiting for direction. His lip curls, very faintly. They have no order. They do not understand the _Qun_.

Without his soul, he has no place in the _Qun_.

Without his soul, he cannot return to the Beresaad.

From over the horizon, death is coming. It will be here soon, and his shame with be obliterated with what remains of his life. It is right that it should be so. It is in accordance with the _Qun_. A man cannot lose his soul and live. Not if he is a man.

His nostrils flare. Blood on the wind, and fighting. Death is coming. Almost, he smiles. He is a Sten of the Vanguard, and death will relieve his dishonour.

Death is enough.

The woman-elf is unexpected.

She is a woman and a warrior and one of these things cannot be true. Like all elves she is slender, sickly-thin, but her eyes burn with a dark, patient light, and her considering glance challenges his choice of deaths.

It is difficult, to be in a strange land. More difficult, without his soul. Patiently, he waits. Patiently, she explains. He has heard of _Grey Wardens_. He has heard of these _Blights._

A Blight is a worthy foe. There is no shame in fighting it, even without his soul. He nods. Considers the _Qun_. Decides.

He will follow this strange creature, this woman-Warden, for a time. It will be, he expects, a more interesting way to die.


	9. To Her Pledged Word True

**9. To Her Pledged Word True**

#**  
**

_"And I to my pledged word am true,_

_I shall not fail that rendezvous."_

_-Alan Seeger, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death"_

#_  
_

* * *

Between Ostagar and Denerim

.

_Ser Cauthrien:_

He commands, and she obeys. Leads, and she follows. He is the Hero of the River Dane, the man who put a sword in her grasp and a hand on her shoulder and the hard honour of _duty _in her heart, and this is how things are.

This is how they have always been.

She thinks that he has not always been so cold.

The teyrn has ever been a hard man, dark and resolute, sparing with praise, comfortless. Maric's death left him bitterer and more chill, and for years Cailan's folly tried his temper. On the long march north from Ostagar, bannorn levies melting away like snow in the thaw, that chill hardens to solid ice. He could be a man carved from frost and granite, for there is no mortal give in him.

Not since the darkspawn broke the line.

Cauthrien rides at his side as befits his second, much as she has ever done: gives his orders, organises troop detachments and dispositions, harries camp followers and the baggage train. Tries to ignore the stink of defeat that clings to them all like smoke. Captain of Maric's Shield, commander of Cailan's household troops, she closes her ears to rumour, grits her teeth, and does her best not to remember the sight of the king's line breaking, darkspawn howling vicious through the breach as the flanks collapsed, untried levies turning to flight in horror.

_I told him we should put the Wardens on the flanks. _

It is a cold thought, worn-out with tired bitterness. She trusts Loghain's judgement. He judged the battle lost, and the king with it. She will not argue. It is better to save what they can - this long brown snake of weary soldiers, retreating but not routed - than to hazard and lose all.

Anora is childless. Cailan has no clear heir. This is a truth that turns her gut with dread, but she will not say it to the grim, hard planes of the teyrn's mask-like face. She does not doubt him: he is a more certain lodestone of her faith than the Chant or long-burned Andraste, more constant than the cold, distant stars. He _will_ defend Ferelden. And she will help him do so.

She does not doubt him. But he has not always been so cold.

8

* * *

8

_Not quite sure what Cauthrien's doing here. But then, not sure with Leliana or Sten, either. Tell me what you think?_


	10. The Face of the Foe

**10. The Face of the Foe**

**#**

_"No man ever seen the face of his foe no_

_He ain't made of flesh and bone_

_He's the one who sits up close beside you_

_And when he's there you're all alone." _

_- 16 Horsepower, "Black Soul Choir_

_#_

_

* * *

_

_#_

Between Lothering and Redcliff

_Leliana:_

The darkspawn are more terrifying than Leliana has expected.

Four days out of Lothering, just short of noon, and Alistair goes stiff as a hunting hound. "Darkspawn," he says, quietly. "Not a small group."

"Close," Kallian Tabris agrees, and shrugs her shield down onto her forearm. Her dark glance takes in Leliana and Sten. Light, full of irony: "As we practiced, then. Don't let their appearance shake you. They die like men."

_Like men._ The Wardens lead the way over a crest in the road. Leliana tries to let that comfort her.

They look half-rotted, poisonous white-eyed things with stained blades and hollow grunts for voices. In the bright sunlight of the roadway, they seem more like a waking nightmare than something real.

But they _are _real, and the screaming from the covered wagon is real, and the dead child sprawled in the wheelrut is _real_, and the monstrous _thing _with yellow fangs and a bloody pike is also, undeniably, _real_.

_Andraste and the Maker, help me now._

Leliana nocks an arrow with fingers that are too cold, too calm, too frightened to shake, sights along the draw. The Wardens advance in lockstep, silent, shields held steady: beside her Sten unlimbers his greatsword and the mabari Reaver crouches in preparation for a charge. Morrigan mutters low in her throat.

They die like beasts. Not like men. Men might flinch, men might die with something other than hate in their eyes -

But they die.

When it's over, Alistair takes one look inside the covered wagon and stumbles away retching. Tabris goes in, re-emerging with bloody hands and an iron face, and silently watches Alistair empty his guts on the roadside. Leliana steps carefully around the darkspawn corpses, touches the elf's shoulder lightly. Pretends not to notice the controlled flinch. "Is he all right?" she asks, softly.

_Are you?_

The slight Warden blows a sharp breath between her teeth. "I don't know, Leliana." An edge in her voice: "How often do _you _think he's seen disembowelled children?"

Leliana swallows. "They were dead?"

"They are now," Tabris says, very soft and tight. "You don't recover from _that _much damage. Not if you have the best healing mage in Thedas. Which Morrigan is not." Her fists clench and unclench. Her glance is flat, bitter: shadowed. For the first time Leliana realises how _young _the elf is, despite the hardness in her features. Hardly more than a child herself.

Almost, she wants to ask how someone so young can look on dead children without flinching. With nothing more than a tightened jaw and a tired gaze.

The moment where she might have asked passes. Tabris squares her shoulders, shrugs off Leliana's touch, starts towards Alistair with a resolute stride. Over her shoulder, once more grim and businesslike: "We'll salvage what we can. Tell Sten and Morrigan I want a pyre. Leave nothing for the scavengers, or they'll be tainted."

Grim, brooding Sten, Morrigan harsh and pointed as a carrion bird. Leliana begins to understand. They are none of them _all right, _here._  
_

_Sin unto heaven_, she thinks. _Doom unto the world._

_Maker, guide me well._

_8  
_

_

* * *

_

8

_Tabris surprised me here. So did Leliana, for that matter._


	11. No Drowning Mark

_Fouler language than usual.  
_

_

* * *

_

_._

**11. No Drowning Mark**

.

_GONZALO_

_._

_I have great comfort from this fellow: methinks he_

_hath no drowning mark upon him; his complexion is_

_perfect gallows. Stand fast, good Fate, to his_

_hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable,_

_for our own doth little advantage. If he be not_

_born to be hanged, our case is miserable._

_._

_-Wm. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I Scene I_

_._

_

* * *

._

Redcliff Village

.

_Tabris:_

The breeze off Lake Calenhad smells like dead men, rot, and fear, but it's still better than the odour of wound-fever and confinement inside the Chantry. Kallian invokes Teagan's name and authority with reckless abandon, trusting the bann has judged rightly in thinking his people will take aid from an elf. He has: the stocky mayor squints at her suspiciously, but settles once it's clear she knows her business.

_Barricades._ She snorts to herself. Every elf in Denerim knows barricades, when hardly a summer goes by without a riot. "Sten is taking a look at the approaches," she says to Murdock's worried gaze, twining her fingers in Reaver's wiry ruff to keep them from closing around her sword. Nerves. She's not at ease around the shem, and she can't afford to let it show. The mabari makes a soft noise in his throat and leans his giant head against her thigh. _Good dog. _"If there's anything more that can be done, he'll spot it."

The Sten of the Beresaad does not lie, as far as she can tell. _I know war,_ he said in his cage in Lothering. And war he knows. Small company combat, at least: his silent competence is encouraging, and he does not stint his knowledge when she asks.

"I don't trust qunari," Ser Perth mutters, scratching his jaw with blunt fingernails. She ignores him. It's not really a protest, just a way for him to voice his apprehension without admitting it. They're all afraid. So is she, but she has more to fear than familiar corpses that don't know when to lie down.

Sten to the approaches, and Morrigan, raven-formed, to scout - _cautiously _- the keep on the bluff. _Information wins battles_, _logistics wins wars_. That's something Leliana said, startlingly enough: the Chantry sister has hidden depths behind her cheerful not-quite-all-there facade. She and Alistair are helping haul timber for the barricades: hot, dirty work, but needful.

Which leaves her to lean over a crude plan of the village spread over a splintering barrel-top, ankle-deep in mud beside Murdock, Ser Perth and Harrith, and make sure they're all fighting from the same page. The weak afternoon sunlight fades the ink-drawn lines, and the breeze flips the edges of the parchment.

Perth's knights - all five of them, and that's including, she knows, the squire who inherited his master's arms this morning - and two-thirds of Murdock's militia will be on the approach to the keep. The rest of the militia will man the barricades around the Chantry house, with Harrith's four templars as a last-ditch reserve. "I don't see any way around it," she says, and sighs. "Knight-Commander, I'm leaving Morrigan with you. She's a match for any three men in a fight, and better at distance work than an archer, so I don't want to hear any shit from your templar brothers about apostates, understand?"

"I understand." Harrith's tenor is surprisingly light for a man of his bulk, and his lip curls in a smile in the shadow of his stubble. "I'll make sure they manage to forget she's a mage at all. I take it you'll be on the bluff?"

"Leliana will stay with the archers." She rubs her forehead. "But Alistair, Sten and I will take the front line, yes. If we form the centre of the militia's line, while Ser Perth anchors the left, that puts the right up against a cliff. I think we can hold there for a time, and manage a fighting retreat down to the village if necessary." _I think. I hope._ "What do you think, Ser Perth?"

"That's probably the best use of our resources," the knight agrees, tiredly. "Maker send it is enough, Warden."

"It will be." From somewhere she dredges up a grin. "Alistair and I survived Ostagar, gentlemen. After a darkspawn horde, a few knock-kneed corpses should be simple."

Reaver barks agreement, and Murdock manages a smile.

"Hey, Murdock!" The mayor's folding up the map when the shout comes from the barricades. The militia teams have stopped hauling and hammering for a water break, and there's an ugly expression on one man's square, red face. "You really think some knife-eared whore can save us?"

Beside him, another man - big, blond, filthy - snorts. "Maybe he thinks she's gonna save his _prick_, Dag."

The first man grabs at his crotch. His grin's a rictus. "Save _me_, Warden Knife-Ear!"

Frightened men, doing what frightened men do.

"They're loudmouths, Warden." Murdock shrugs an apology. "Trying to stop them would only make them worse." But his eyes slide aside from her glance, and her mouth tightens.

"I understand," she says, quietly, and turns away. Best to look over the ground once more with her own eyes than to waste time contesting what little authority she has -

"You insult _her_," a very familiar, very angry voice says loudly, "and you insult _all _the Grey Wardens. You don't want to do _that_, do you?"

"Alistair!" Naked sword, naked anger, and the militia reaching for their weapons. Not good for any of them. Kallian puts a crack into her voice. "Alistair, _with me._"

"But he -"

"_Now_," she grinds out, feeling the moment's tension humming in her veins. One wrong word, one wrong _flinch_, and the only way this ends will be in blood.

And Leliana - _blessed _Leliana - lays a hand on his swordarm and murmurs something low-voiced and urgent. He rams his sword home into its scabbard, an angry red suffusing his features. But he comes, Leliana trailing him worriedly.

"Kallian -"

She jerks her head towards the shoreline, cuts him off. "Walk with me, Alistair." Cold and very calm: "You too, Leliana, if you will."

At the water's edge they are out of earshot of anyone save insects and the water-rat that rustles the reeds as they pass. The light ripples from the water, and tiny wavelets lip the stones. A faint haze obscures the horizon. Very quietly, Kallian says, "You realise, Alistair, that just now you could have caused us a disaster?"

"But he called you -"

"I know what he called me." He might be her age in years, but in many ways he's so damn young it breaks her heart. The alienage - her mother's death, her own arrest for theft, everything that followed - gave her a charred ruin of a childhood. A jaundiced view of the world. She meets his wounded brown eyes steadily. "Do you imagine it's the first time I've heard it?"

"But -" He worries his lower lip. "Doesn't it make you, I don't know, _angry_?"

"Angry?" Her laugh is a bitter bark. "Do I have a right to be angry at the truth, Alistair? I've sold my body for coin or food more than once. I grew up in the _alienage. _Nearly everyone over the age of twelve has, one time or another. Even if I hadn't, to men like him, that's all I am. Just another knife-eared bitch from the gutter." Her lips tighten. "And attacking him over it will only make it harder to do our jobs here, Alistair. It's hard to defend anything if you're imitating a pincushion, or didn't you notice the archers?"

"They would have killed you, Alistair," Leliana adds, seriously. Kallian acknowledges her support with a nod. Their eyes meet, and there is an understanding darkness in the Orlesian's gaze. _Unexpected depths._ "Truly. That... _man_ is one of their own, and we are the outsiders here, yes?"

"Right." He has a mulish expression. "I still don't think it's right."

"It's the way of the world, Alistair." She exhales through her teeth. "Worry about it _after _we survive the night. Right now, we have a job to do. And we need to get it done."

.

* * *

.

_That ran longer than I expected. Any votes for what to do next, and from whose POV?_


	12. Close To The Darkness And Ruin

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff

_Leliana:_

Twilight falls along the bluff in shades of purple and grey. The shadows lengthen along the escarpment. Redcliff's militia are hunkered down behind their barricades, little knots of men dozing or talking or nervously tending their arms. Alistair is strolling up and down the line beside Perth with a quip or an encouraging word for the nervous; Sten sleeps soundly, head pillowed on his arm, snoring softly.

Careful not to disturb him, Leliana drops down opposite Kallian. The elf is resting, but when Leliana clears her throat, she looks up with inquiring eyes.

Leliana nods her head towards Alistair. "I would have thought you would be doing the rounds with Ser Perth."

"Alistair needs the practice." The rueful quirk of Kallian's lips is touched with bitterness. "And Perth and Harrith might be open-minded sorts, but Murdock's men will be more comfortable with a human. They're on edge enough as it is."

"It is not right," Leliana says, quietly. "Alistair was correct about that." _In Orlais_... But she has been guilty of the same sin, in Orlais. Marjolaine had taught her never to _overlook_ elves, but she has never considered them in the same light. Tabris is causing her to examine the assumptions that survived her entry to the Chantry. She is finding it an... _uncomfortable _process.

"Right or wrong, it is what it is." Kallian exhales. "And Alistair _does _need the practice."

8

* * *

8

_This is the first of several very short bits in and around the battle for Redcliff. Let me know how you think they're working, please?_


	13. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: II

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: II  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Dwyn:_

It's been thirty years since the head of House Gavorn died in Roshan Aeducan's mad first attempt to open the way between Orzammar and Kal Sharrok. Thirty years since he lost his honour and left his eldest son with a choice between the Legion and the surface: Stonehammer's get have a bad habit of bearing hard grudges.

In that time Dwyn's fought his way from the High Reaches to the Arbour Wilds. As caravan guard and company sergeant and everything in between, until a caravan master paid him off in backwater Redcliff village, and peaceful retirement looked more attractive than another winter stumping aching bones after sodding merchants who haven't the sense the Stone gave a nug.

Thirty years, and he hates _mud _more with each one of them.

He leans on his pike in the gathering dusk, watching the defile. Beside him Martin hums tunelessly under his breath - the elf-kid he'd taken under his wing so long ago in Hossberg has been with him fifteen years now this spring, long enough they may as well be a married pair - elbows resting on the top of the barricade.

The elf-Warden knows her business: the defile will force the walking dead to bunch up, and she's arranged the barrels of oil so that a single archer can set them alight, drenching the attackers and setting them aflame before they even reach the line of the barricade. He's almost glad she persuaded him to leave his fortified house, now: sometimes you have to make a stand, and this looks like a good place for one.

He grins in his beard. _And the silver's always a nice bonus._

The blond Warden's walking the line, Ser Perth at his shoulder. Good to see someone knows a comforting hand on the shoulder and a friendly joke does wonders to keep men ready. The waiting's always the worst.

"Ready to stand with us, Dwyn?" Blondie says, half a smile on his lips, uncertainty in his eyes.

Dwyn grunts. He hardly notices having to look _up_ at nearly everyone anymore: being short and sturdy has its advantages in a fight. But this Warden is tall even for a human. "Ready, aye." He spits sideways. "I hear you fought the 'spawn at Ostagar, Warden."

"Hundreds upon hundreds of 'em," Blondie says, Perth bland and silent behind him. "Even an ogre."

"Compared to darkspawn, this'll be easy, then." A lie, but it's what the Warden needs to hear. What Martin needs to hear. Dwyn grins sourly. _Ancestors, it seems I still think like a sergeant._

"Right you are." Cheerfully: "Can't be worse than ogres."

_Yes, it can._ But the blond Warden - Allen, or Adam, something like that - has already moved on to the next section of the line.

"Crazy shem," Martin mutters under his breath, watching him go.

Dwyn bumps his shoulder against Martin's mailed arm. "Watch that mouth, lad," he says. "All you surfacers are crazy from where I'm standing."

"Crazy dwarf," Martin mutters, but there's a gleam of amusement in his eye.

8

* * *

8

_This is the second of several very short bits in and around the battle for Redcliff. Next, Alistair.  
_


	14. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: III

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: III  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Alistair:_

He's nervous, at first. Kallian pushes him at Ser Perth, says, _Walk the barricades. Make sure everyone's ready and at their post_, and pays no attention to his panicked glance.

He's not a leader, but even Ser Perth - and he remembers Ser Perth from before the monastery, a big man with a commanding presence even then - seems to expect him to have words of wisdom, or some Grey Warden magic to prop up the defences.

He thinks about what _Duncan _would do - not without a pang of loss - and it steadies him. He even manages to meet the eyes of the man who called Kallian a whore and keep his temper. _We'll beat them back,_ he says to one; and to another, _You think the walking dead are bad? You should have met the Divine at the monastery where I trained. Now _she _was scary._

It's easier than he thought it would be.

When the signal goes up, it's full dark. In the rustle and jingle of men shuffling into line, he takes his place at Kallian's left hand, meets her grim smile with a resolute nod.

He's ready. He won't let her down.

8

* * *

8

_This is the third of several very short bits in and around the battle for Redcliff. Next, Murdock. In a few days.  
_


	15. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: IV

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: IV  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Murdock:_

The dead march through fire.

Through the flames, a ragged nightmare of rotted flesh and dry bone, blades in their corpse-claw hands. One drops and another takes its place, shoving forward as their bones blacken and char, the remnants of their muscles twist and curl. The stink on the breeze is worse than Denerim's tanneries, worse than any boneyard pit.

Forty years Murdock's served the Guerrins of Redcliff, man and boy. Tilled their land, milled their grain, taken their salt, eaten their bread. He's old enough to remember Arl Rendorn, old enough to have served as a runner in the Lady Rowan's train at the battle of the River Dane, and he hasn't been this afraid since the emperor of Orlais called his chevaliers home.

The dead shouldn't get up from their graves and walk. The dead shouldn't come at you with well-known faces, shouldn't keep coming until they haven't a limb left to crawl on.

In his place with the archers, he nocks an arrow to his bow. Waits for the signal to dip it in burning pitch and send it into a dead face. A face he prays he doesn't know. He remembers seeing Dag's sister, the first night. Remembers seeing Dag put a pike through her guts and weep while she tried to climb up its shaft and kill him with her dead-rotting hands.

_Do not be afraid_, the Orlesian minstrel murmured when she took her place with his half-dozen bowmen. She stands now patient, ready, the light of the flames reflecting from her foreign face. _Do not be afraid. The Wardens will stand._

An elf and a callow youth and a qunari giant who is, as far as he can tell, not even of the Grey.

And he'd scarce credit it if another told the tale, but the dead hit the centre of the barricade, where Alistair - his fair hair hidden under a battered helm - and the greatsword-wielding qunari flank a slender figure with a dark blank tabard over her mail.

The dead hit the centre, and crumble.

They lose the barricades, of course. With only fifty men to hold the line, less than ten of them well-trained, it's inevitable.

But it takes four hours, and by the time they retreat to the bridge - long out of arrows, he's in the line himself by then, lips cracking with thirst and a dead man's shield on his aching arm - the moon is slipping towards the horizon and the hideous onslaught of corpses has slowed to a trickle. And throughout, the Wardens and the qunari - even the _Orlesian _- always where they're needed most, working together like the fingers of one single deadly _tireless _hand.

He's maybe starting to think Redcliff will survive this, after all.

8

* * *

8

_This is the fourth of several very short bits in and around the battle for Redcliff. Next, Perth._

_I'm thinking Perth, Harrith, Morrigan and maybe one or two others - Teagan, perhaps, or Tabris again - to round out the battle for Redcliff village before moving on to the castle. What do you think?  
_

_Of course, best laid plan of mice and men, and all that. We'll see what happens.  
_


	16. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: V

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: V  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Perth:_

The battle-line holds at the bridge.

He has torches set at both ends, and their orange light reflects from the deep-rushing water to flicker on tired, drained faces. Twenty-two of the militia are still fit to hold weapons. Five more may survive their injuries, if they live through the night, and for the rest -

His lips compress. A dozen men are dead already, and six more fair to join them, unless the Maker's mercy extends to a miracle. His squire is one of them, Donal's fresh-faced brother. Only yesterday, Perth promised him his knighthood. Tomorrow, if he lives, he will have to stand at his funeral.

Andraste's _mercy_, but seventeen is far too young to die.

With the oncoming dead slowed to a trickle, there is time to breathe. To step back from the line and swig from a waterskin - water with a dash of vinegar, the old trick to cut the dust from your tongue. To watch Alistair, his face and armour splashed with drying blood, joke with Murdock; and the qunari, a silent bulwark, move among the wounded in the bridge's lee with bandages and a flask full of some liquid potion.

In one of the tense intervals between corpses, he catches the elf-Warden's eye: "A word, Warden?"

The elf comes: a murmur to young Alistair, a gesture to bring the Orlesian minstrel to trail at her shoulder, a confident expression to reassure the men in the line.

_Tabris,_ he reminds himself. _Her name is Tabris_. And while the Warden might be an elf, she is neither lazy nor stupid - nor in any sense a coward or a fool.

_It would,_ he thinks, _be wise to remember that._

And the cold precision with which she fights.

"Ser Perth." Sweat sticks her hair to her forehead under her helm, and blood dries on one bruised cheek. Weariness has carved deep hollows in the shadow of her eyes, but her gaze is level, and she hefts her shield onto her shoulder without apparent effort. "What do you need?"

_A hundred men like you._ "Your opinion," he says instead, and tilts his head towards the bridge. His helm shifts, and he reaches up to remove it. The breeze trails cool fingers through his sweaty hair. _Andraste, I'm tired_. "Should we try to move the wounded down to the chantry? If we have to retreat from here, the Maker knows we won't have an easy task carrying them."

She's injured, herself: a spearblade has torn the mail links on her right shoulder, and blood coats the metal. The Orlesian notices at the same instant he does and hisses through her teeth. "_Kallian _-"

"It'll keep, Leliana." She shrugs the injured shoulder. The twist of her mouth could be a wince. Perhaps, but Perth reckons it closer to impatience. "Some of those men will need litters to get down the path, ser knight. Unless the walking corpses suddenly start acting clever, or we get a fresh rush of them, I think we can hold here to daylight and then see about moving them."

"And if we don't hold?" He keeps his voice level.

Tabris' smile is as thin as a knife. "Then," she says softly, "the chantry won't be much safer, will it?

The runner who comes gasping up the path heartbeats later adds pointed irony to her words.

_They're in the village! They're coming from the lake!_

Perth recognises him - young Loghain, the farrier's son, maybe fourteen years old, pale and sweaty and terrified. The Orlesian steadies his shoulder while the Warden asks a swift series of calm, patient questions - _How many? From exactly where? For how long? Harrith's disposition?_ - and Perth is forced to acknowledge around his own quiet dread that she does as good a job of getting the boy to focus as he could himself.

"Alistair, Sten, with me!" A glance at the Orlesian. Something passes between them, and the quirk of Tabris' lips is almost a smile. "And you, of course." But when she turns to Perth, a terrible weariness hardens her eyes, sharp and cold as iron. "Keep the rest here. It sounds like the militia by the chantry mostly need their spines stiffened, but I'll send word back if it looks like they're - we're - going to be overrun. Be prepared to come quickly."

He realises, not without rueful amusement, that he's as prepared to follow her orders - more, even - as he would the arl's. _An elf, Perth?_

But there is hard resolve in her, good steel that has cut away his doubts, so -

"Yes, Warden," he says, softly, and touches his breast in salute. "Fortune and the Maker go with you."

She bares her teeth, quick and savage, collects her people with a gesture and a glance, and set off at a dog-trot down the stony track to the village.

Perth replaces his sweat-damp helm and turns back to _his _battle-line. His eyes are gritty with tiredness and strain, and the night is hardly two-thirds done. "Maker preserve us," he mutters.

They have to hold. There's no other choice.

8

* * *

8

_It's kind of hard to get into Perth's head. Probably because the feudal system in Ferelden looks awkwardly unlike what I expect it ought to._

_Oh, well. Harrith next. Maybe Ser Templar will be more co-operative.  
_


	17. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: VI

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: VI  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Harrith:_

"So much," the black-haired apostate says, sour, "for stopping these filthy things on the bluff."

The cold thrum of her magic vibrates at the base of Harrith's skull, and another trio of corpses stop shambling towards the barricades and burst into flame. He rests his gauntleted hand calmly on the hilt of his sword. His job as commander is to be seen, and to be seen to be confident. So despite the militia's anxious glances, he does not move from his post on the chantry step beside her. Mildly, he says, "Then we shall stop them here."

The mabari warhound crouched at the witch's feet lolls a pink, panting tongue at him. In the crude torchlight, Harrith could swear the dog is grinning.

The corpses shuffling up through the houses from the lakeshore are slow things, wet and weed-dripping, but determined. His subordinate brothers step in and out from the half-circle of the barricades, hacking at crawling limbs that evade the militia; intervening here and there to dispatch a particularly stubborn dead thing. For all her caustic tongue, the witch is more than competent: she is sparing with her power, flaming the shambling things in twos and threes before they reach the line, leaving few enough for the half-trained boys - all Perth left him - to dispatch.

He sent the runner to the escarpment - Perth and the Wardens should know of the front opened behind them - but honestly, the dead are _stupid_. And so far, far short of overwhelming numbers.

If Isolde hadn't sent Eamon's knights away on that mad quest, none of this would have happened.

He snorts to himself, softly. He has met the arlessa often enough to know her for a particular kind of fool, the kind who thinks that their cleverness will always answer the occasion.

Maker only knows if the silly woman still lives.

"Oh, very well," the witch says. Whiplike, her magic snaps out again, and another fireball explodes among a clump of walking dead. Sweat stands out on her forehead, and her jaw is tight. Anger or strain - most likely a combination of both. She gives him an irritated yellow glare. "Have you nothing better to do than to watch me so? I assure you, 'tis _deeply _unlikely I am about to transform into an abomination."

He can feel the pressure in the Veil. The presence of walking dead means that somewhere near, it's already torn: something to give any templar nightmares. Demons are attracted to such rips, and worse things than demons. Another templar - Tavish in Denerim, maybe, a right prig who still believes that the Chantry shits moonbeams and farts roses despite having seen as much of the effects of longterm lyrium addiction as Harrith has, or perhaps young Ser Rylock from the training house in Waking Sea - might even fear that the very presence of an apostate mage threatened their immortal soul.

_Harrith's_ soul is already damned. He has known this ever since his first assignment as a templar brother, when what his commander ordered done to the poor sodding apostate they caught turned his stomach. Worse, his brothers obeyed.

And so did he.

_We all make sacrifices._ His father said that to him, outside the chantry gate, when, aged twelve, he entered service. Harrith has given up his soul, his honour, and eventually the lyrium will take his mind - but he has not lost his sense of humour.

So he snorts, and says, lightly, "Any sensible demon would run screaming from you, my lady."

"I am _far _from certain you mean that as a compliment, templar." There is amusement alongside the strain in the witch's sharp voice. "But I shall take it as one."

_Good. I did mean it._

_Tonight, witch, I'm glad to have you on my side._

8

* * *

8

_Next, Morrigan. Then Teagan, and that will probably end the "Close To The Darkness And Ruin" sketches._

_I'll have to find another quote for inside the castle. :P_


	18. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: VII

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: VII  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Morrigan:_

Torch-smoke waters Morrigan's eyes, clings chokingly in her throat. She casts between coughs, each fresh spell a searing drain on her energies. She is down to the barest dregs of her mana, and the stench of rot and death fills her nostrils.

The world outside the Korcari Wilds is very different than she expected. For one thing, she did not expect it to be quite so full of unnatural things bent on killing her.

_Mother, when I see you again, you and I will have_ words.

The Templar commander stands a stern bulwark at her right hand. Twice now he has stepped forward - the Warden's mangy warhound lunging at his heels - to strike down an all-too-dogged corpse whose mindless determination drove it towards the chantry doors - towards her.

Another knot of shambling things are rushing the barricades. She draws on her last reserves - but the spell fizzles into nothingness before it's halfway to completion. The recoil stings like needles along her skin. She grits her teeth, resolved not to let the templar see her weak, and reaches for the crossbow Tabris insisted she carry. Weakness is death.

Here most especially.

"Foolish witch," the Templar growls, and shoves a potion bottle into her hands. "Lyrium. Drink."

Cold fire burns her throat. A familiar rush crackles through her veins, and icy sharpness slips between her and her weariness like the panes of frosted glass in Lothering's chantry. The Fade brightens in her awareness and when she casts the spell it forms hard and spiky as chipped diamond.

Morrigan smiles savagely, and the nearest clump of over-energetic corpses ignites with a _whump_.

'Tis a pity this Harrith is a templar. He seems quite bright. And nearly handsome.

She turns another dead thing into ash, gives him a swift glance. "Dare I expect that you have many more of those?"

"Enough." His tone is almost amused. "They will do me no good if we're all dead, so I suggest you tell me when you find your mana running low."

_Whump. Whump-whump-whump_. Turning dead creatures into bonfires is _satisfying_. "Will your Chantry not disapprove of supplying an _apostate _with lyrium?"

"Perhaps. If you tell them."

The smile that curves his lips in the shadow of his helm is more than _nearly _handsome.

##

8

##

When the Wardens arrive - reinforcements bone-weary and bleeding, Tabris vaulting the barricade blank-faced and grim, Alistair's grin dented and smeared with blood, Leliana's hands white around her bowstave, even Sten worn and ragged around the edges - Morrigan is startled by the depth of her relief.

_Weakness is death._

She does not choose to examine the emotion, but it disconcerts her nonetheless.

The world outside the Wilds is _entirely _more irritating than she expected.

8

* * *

8

_Next, Teagan, and that will probably end the "Close To The Darkness And Ruin" sketches._

_I'm slowing down, as you can no doubt tell. Life, as always, intervenes.  
_


	19. Close To The Darkness And Ruin: VIII

**Close To The Darkness And Ruin: VIII  
**

.

_And something miraculous will come  
close to the darkness and ruin,  
something no-one, no-one, has known,  
though we've longed for it since we were children. _

.

_- "Everything," Anna Akhmatova_

.

* * *

.

Redcliff village.

_Teagan_:

Teagan sleeps in restless snatches. The cold granite wall at his back presses the links of his mail - silverite, Eamon's gift, so very long ago - into his gambeson. Too thinly padded, or he has gone armoured too long: it feels like thistle-burrs along his spine.

His sheathed sword lies braced across his knee. A hard weight, and comfortless. It was his sister's blade. Her hands were large for a woman. The hilt has fit his grip perfectly from the hour that Maric, haggard with grief, gave it into his hands.

_She wanted you to have this._

Rowan has been dead for half his lifetime, and Teagan is looking at the south side of forty. His memories of her are a boy's, tinted with a touch of awe and hero-worship and not a little resentment that she could fight beside the father he barely knew; an adolescent's, seeing her seldom and when he did abjured to respect for his sister and his queen.

Lately he has found her much in his thoughts. A friendly ghost, if he might strain to believe in such a thing; and if not, well. Caged within the chantry by Perth's deferential but unbending insistence and the need to present a familiar, confident leader to the villagers, there is little to do but think. It is hardly surprising if his mind wanders from the flat taste of fear on his tongue, hidden behind a calm mask; his dread for Eamon and Connor and Isolde - for _Ferelden_, with Cailan dead heirless and a Blight rising in the south - and his white-knuckled pretence that he is worthy of the Guerrin name.

He has wondered, in the last days, if Rowan were ever this afraid, this _terrified _that she would die and everything she loved with her. She must have been: she fought a war, after all, one with very little hope of victory. _Guerrins don't lose_ is only a lie they tell themselves, a face they present to the world.

The example of Arl Rendorn's head on an Orlesian pike is proof enough of that, if he ever chanced forgetting.

Yet he has his duty, as his father and his sister had before him. And though his honour chafes at being held in safety in the close, fear- and fever-rank confines of Mother Hannah's chantry while men and women fight and die outside, he will do his duty.

If Eamon and Connor are dead, he is the last of the Guerrin line. For his father's memory - for his sister's - he will be the calm face, the confident bann, and prepare to stand with the Wardens against the Blight.

Provided, of course, they all survive to morning.

8

* * *

8

_I am debating whether or not Teagan will get another independent snippet soon hereafter. Depends, I suppose, on whether or not he insists on one. This piece here, however, concludes "Close To The Darkness and Ruin." Coming next, inside Redcliff Castle: "What Branches Grow."_

_"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow __Out of this stony rubbish?" _  
_- T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land: I: The Burial of the Dead"_


	20. What Branches Grow I: A Handful of Dust

_**Wh****at Branches Grow**_

**.  
**

I: Fear In A Handful Of Dust

.

* * *

.

Redcliffe:

.

_Isolde:_

Oh, Connor. Oh, her poor boy.

It's the mage's fault, the filthy creature. He put that _thing _inside Connor, he started the killing, and the dying, and the -

She stumbles on a charred rock. The path down from the keep is uneven, ill-maintained. Mud scums the hem of her skirts, and the wind from the lake plucks at her half-braided hair. She hasn't seen her tiring-maids since Connor - since the _thing _inside Connor -

She flinches from the memory, blood pooling in the great hall and her son laughing over the screams. The _thing _wants Teagan. Maybe Teagan can talk sense into it, can negotiate, can _do something._ She just wants her son back. Her son, and her husband - but if she has to choose, she'll take her son. Eamon was so distant of late, before his sickness, always in Denerim or away on some business for Cailan, always talking of politics and _keeping His Majesty's friendship, Isolde; the best interests of Ferelden, Isolde_, leaving her shut up in the drafty keep with no one but rustic knights and a handful of their equally rustic wives and daughters for company. There is no conversation in Ferelden but the weather, hounds and the hunt, no _culture_: her son, her only surviving child, is all that makes it bearable.

He should have had sisters to dower, brothers for support: that he does not is her failure, and her fault.

* * *

Teagan is by the mill, his features - a younger mirror of her husband's - haggard, unshaven, worn. A motley crew of grim fighters surround him, mercenaries by their looks. No lord worth his salt - she sniffs to think of it - would maintain a troop that included an elf, a qunari, and a Chasind woman with charms in her hair.

The blond human with them is startlingly familiar. _Alistair? Here?_ He should be dead at Ostagar, not here alive and well and smiling as though she should welcome him: it is unfair, bitterly unfair, that he should live while her husband lies so close to death, while her _son _-

She chokes her fury. "Teagan, you must come. For Connor's sake, if not for mine. Please, Teagan."

He has ever been the softer brother. She is nearly sure of him. Nearly. _Oh, Connor. Oh my boy._

"The arlessa is not telling us everything," one of the mercenaries says suddenly. A red-haired woman with Orlais' soft consonants in her voice and hard wariness in her bruised green eyes_._ "There is more to this story, no?"

"My lord." The elf. Her face is unreadable. "I do not advise this. It would be unwise to walk into a trap."

"How dare you?" Isolde is incensed. _For Connor_, she tells the tiny voice of guilt. For Connor, anything. Even Teagan. Even _Eamon_. "Who are _you _to question my word?"

"A Grey Warden." Teagan, stern. He always was too easy on the lower orders. "And deserving of your courtesy. Give me a moment, Isolde. Tabris, a word?"

He turns his back. _Insufferable man._ She clasps her fretful hands, presses dry lips together until they crack. _For Connor..._

They converse in low tones, too quiet to overhear. The elf's expression goes from unreadable to granite-hard. "If you get yourself killed, my lord," she says, the words loud and bitten-off, "I'm not cleaning up the body."

"Your concern warms my heart, Warden." A half-smile, which flattens as Teagan returns to Isolde. He offers his hand, careful and precise: "I am at your service, my lady arlessa. Shall we?"

His hand is large, calloused, grimy, cold. She accepts with all the courtly dignity she can summon, hiding her inward leap of triumphant hope. "Of course, Bann Teagan."

_Oh, Connor! Please, let this be enough._

_8_

_

* * *

_

8

_Sorry for the lengthy interlude. My head got eaten by the slings and arrows of so long life. I can't promise any more regularity going forward, either._

_Tell me what you think? Whose POV should come next, and why?  
_


	21. What Branches Grow II: Mon semblable

**_What Branches Grow._**

II: Mon semblable, mon frère

8

* * *

8

Redcliffe:

_The Sten_

The night was long, and the morning not long enough for rest.

His blade is a poor thing compared to lost Asala, and in sore need of tending: it has grown dull from hewing dead bones and rotting flesh. It is not the only thing to have grown dull. The Warden's wits must be equally blunted, to have let the soft gowned woman manoeuvre the human lord into the teeth of a trap. Ill strategy, to trade one hale leader in the net for another in the sea - and that one dying, crippled, or at any rate far from well.

He growls, a soft disgusted noise. The passage beneath the mill is narrow for his broad shoulders, human-short. He must walk stoop-legged in the dark and let filmy cobwebs trail his ears and nape, while the Tabris ranges ahead in darkness, the mabari silent and attentive at her heels.

The witch is behind him, a state of affairs which runs uneasy prickles up and down his spine. They do not leash their mages, here.

It is not the Way. They do not know the Way here.

But he carries the Way with him, and has for longer than memory recalls. Every canto, every line, graven in his heart, burned in his memory. Written on his soul, though Asala is gone and he is as a dead man and hollow without her.

He is a Sten of the Beresaad, and this is foolishness.

Therefore:

"We are walking into a trap, Warden," he says. "Explain why."

His gravelly voice startles her. Her stride falters - half a stumble - boot scuffing on the dirt floor. But she does not fall.

"Sten." There's an edge of humour in her tone, sharp and astringent. "Sometimes you have to walk into the trap in order to spring it. At least this way, we have some idea what the lure is, and a chance to ambush the ambushers."

He considers this. It is not an ill-formed plan. There is little artistry in it, and too little faith in the first law of battle, but it is not _utter_ foolishness.

"What about Teagan?" Alistair, muffled and challenging behind the witch. The human is soft and unformed by the standards of the Beresaad, but the puppy may make a warrior yet.

"Teagan's neck is Teagan's to risk." The Tabris is grim. "If he won't hear sense when it's spoken, I won't to hold him back by force." A change in inflection. "Are you satisfied, Sten? Or did you have a better plan?"

He considers her question, much as he considered her answer, and with equal thoughtfulness. The tunnel ahead begins to lighten with faint greyness. "You are an optimist, Warden," he says at last. "We are all going to die."

There is no reason his reply should make her laugh.

8

* * *

8

_The title of this segment is from T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land" - I'll be borrowing most of the titles in this section from one part or other of that poem. For those whose French is even rustier than mine, "_Mon semblable, mon frère_," means, "My fellow-creature, my brother." (_Semblable_, as an adjective, means "similar." Somehow it feels appropriate here.)_


	22. WBG III: Lilacs out of the Dead Land

_**What Branches Grow**_

III: Lilacs Out of the Dead Land_**  
**_

#

* * *

8

Redcliffe:

_Jowan:_

.

He is almost used to being afraid.

Some former arl of Redcliffe must have had a fair sideline in holding renegade mages, for his cell is warded against any craft he knows. The spells are old, but solid, a thin tracery of lyrium runes etched high in the cold stone walls, over the lintel of the barred iron door. He doesn't understand the theory. Amell might have - Amell might have understood how it was done, or how to undo it. He resented her for her quick mind, once, her sharp memory, her easy accomodation to their Chantry-ordained cage -

But Amell is behind him, along with everyone else he ever cared for. Lily. The Tower. Dead by now, or Tranquil, or condemned to the painful oblivion of Aeonar. Thinking of her is one more bitter reminder of everything he's lost and betrayed.

He cannot resent her now.

At least the spells have kept the dead things from taking him, as they took the servants and the guards. After what the arlessa did to him, in her panic and her fear, he would have been too weak to defend himself. There is a demon here somewhere, a chill dark presence pressing on his dreams. The pair of dead things rotting by the stair to the upper keep, watching him with rheumy corpse-eyes, sighing with the bloating gas of decomposition and stinking - one used to be a cook, he thinks, from the ragged apron - frighten him but little in comparison to the prospect of its attention.

Dead flesh is nothing. If a demon gets inside his mind it will _unmake_ him, an abomination worse than death, worse even than the mindless blankness of Tranquility.

He's done a lot of stupid things in the last two months. Lost... much. Betrayed... even more, really.

That knowledge hurts more than the weeping blisters where Isolde had her man hold his feet to the fire, than his bruised ribs and broken nose.

Almost more than the demon, he is afraid that now he'll never get the chance to put _anything_ right. Not even a little.

It's cold. The gusting drafts reek of carrion. He draws his knees up close to his aching chest in the ancient, mouldering straw and hugs himself against his pain.

#

##

#

_Have I gone mad?_ he thinks, when the laugh reaches his ears.

A woman's laugh, full and sharp with humour. But it is not madness - or not his alone - for the corpses by the stair lurch forward with malignant intent. Heading _down_ his empty dungeon-passage, the one with no other exit. He staggers to his feet, cranes his neck through the bars. _What -?_

An elf. She cuts the first corpse off at the knees with a grim economy of motion, sidesteps its toppling swipe. Her sword moves in brutally precise geometries of violence. A mabari races past her to bowl the second corpse off its feet. "_Now_, Morrigan!"

Blinding purple light flares with a crack like thunder. Jowan blinks the afterimages from his stinging eyes. The air stinks of ozone and char, and the corpses are still, curled blackened ruins. _Another mage? Here?_

The mabari lifts his muzzle, and pads over to nudge the cell bars with his massive head. "Arf?" it says - _he_, by the evidence - and lolls a pink tongue, panting.

"Well." The elf's boots crunch on one charred corpse's outflung arm. He meets her eyes between the bars of his cell. Her face is all harsh planes, uncompromising lines, skin drawn tight with weariness and strain. Her sword hangs loose in her grasp - he is not foolish enough to think, _carelessly_. "I can't say I expected to find anyone alive down here."

He shakes his head. The corridor behind her is filling up with other people. Including - _Maker's breath, is that a qunari?_ "I'm not sure," he says, and licks his lips. "I'm not sure the arlessa intended for me to _stay_ alive, when she left me here."

"Isolde put you here?" Her expression flickers from amused to _interested_, and he finds himself pinned on the end of an intent stare. "I need information. What do you know?"

#

##

#

_I need to make things right,_ he tells her. _I swear, I won't make things worse._

_Please. Let me try._

There is something in her glance when she agrees - a shadow, a whisper - that makes him think that she might understand why he has asked. Makes him think he can still salvage - _something_.

Some remnant of grace from the wreckage he has made of his dreams.

Strangely, he is no longer quite so afraid.

* * *

8

_Jowan, as requested. I'm hoping I kept this reasonably in character.  
_

_ Not sure who's up next - Teagan will be along again, as will Alistair and Jowan (again) and the demon, and Tabris, and perhaps Leliana, but who is actually *next* is still pretty much up for grabs.  
_

_Thank you to everyone who has commented to date_. _You guys are what keeps me updating this. I deeply appreciate your encouragement and feedback.  
_


	23. WBG IV: Where Dead Men Lost Their Bones

_**What Branches Grow**_

IV: Where The Dead Men Lost Their Bones

#

Redcliffe Castle

_Tabris; Valena._

_Tabris:_

Redcliffe keep stinks of rot.

The corpse-stench coats Kallian's throat, clings in the back of her nostrils. Just one more misery, to accompany grinding weariness and the throbbing ache in her shoulder that drags her shieldarm down.

They are all wounded and worn, after the long night. It's a dangerous fatigue, one that transforms castle halls into an endless granite-walled tapestried maze. She has paired Alistair and Morrigan at the rear, and the hitch in Alistair's stride, like the blood-blisters on Leliana's bowhand and the purpling bruises on the qunari's cheek, is a bitter reminder of how strained they are, how little they can afford another pitched battle. She leads them skulking from corner to corner, and sets Reaver ruthlessly on the handful of corpses they encounter: he, at least, is still full of boundless enthusiasm.

He is the only one.

#

##

They find the blacksmith's daughter crouched behind a chest in a narrow storage room that smells of onions instead of rot.

The door is locked. Leliana tilts her head, lifts one eyebrow: a silent question. Kallian shrugs permission. Reaver's forward-pricked ears indicate something of interest: the absence of his low, rumbling growl inclines her to risk that whatever the lock conceals is not _deadly._

The Chantry sister produces slender iron tools from the lining of her calf-high boot. Agile fingers make short work of the mechanism - Kallian has met cracksmen in Denerim slower than Leliana: it seems an odd skill even for a minstrel - and she gives a count on two fingers and a thumb, _three-two-one_ -

The door swings wide. Kallian goes left, Sten right -

There is a thump from behind the corner chest. Reaver pads over, noses at an edge of cloth, sneezes. His cocked-head whine at Kallian is distinctly reproachful.

_Great. Now even the _dog's _a critic._

She closes her eyes for a moment's weariness. Maybe someone _else _will deal with whoever's hiding in the onion-reeking corner before she has to open them again. Maybe. It's possible. It could happen.

_Someone. Anyone._

She's not that lucky.

#

##

_Valena:_

When Lord Connor cuts Darrian's ears and laughs while the old elf screams, Valena runs. The arlessa has only wept and wrung her hands since this nightmare started, since the young lord lined all the servants up in the great hall with the men-at-arms -

She cannot hold the memory past the blood, dark stains on the polished wood, past Darrian's screams and Aelfgyfa's ragged weeping and the _thing_ that moves like some mockery of a puppeteer's marionette, like Maker-knows-what -

_Abomination_ is the word her mind refuses to form, for the arl's son can't be a mage.

Cannot be. _Is._

She is overlooked. Insignificant. She sidles behind the arras while the young lord's attention wavers to his mother, slips through the old draped door, _flees_.

There is no escape. No way out, no way home - _Father_, she thinks, and her chest clenches: she'll never see him again, never tell another funny story or hear him complain about a sharping merchant with satisfied humour, never again hear him scold her for flirting with the arl's young squires -

She is weeping, silent choking desperate sobs. Her bare feet slap on the flagstones, too loud too _loud -_

_- Andraste preserve me Maker help me save me please -_

The storeroom is blessed silence, the scent of leeks and onions, and a door that locks. She is the least of Isolde's tiring-maids, but she knows where the key lies on the lintel.

The screaming is very distant here. She huddles behind the chest, and prays for deliverance.

#

Deliverance is a mabari, and an elf with a sword.

8

888

8

_Not entirely happy with this. But it will do, I hope._


	24. WBG V: What He Carries On His Back

_What Branches Grow_

V: What He Carries On His Back.

_Extra short this time. Sorry 'bout that._

* * *

Redcliffe Castle

_Teagan:_

Connor is... altered.

The blood on the great hall's floor is part of it, and the terror in the glances of the two trembling servants who flank the door. The shadows that cling in the corners and the cold sense of malevolence and fear, of _presence._

But not all. Teagan's nephew's eyes are sunken bruises, filled with feverish light. His posture, seated in the high chair on the great hall's dais, is not that of a child.

_Predator_, Teagan thinks, but this is his _nephew_, Eamon's little boy. A boy of floppy hair and skinned knees and big, watering eyes, too sickly and delicate to foster as a page -

"Here he is, Connor." Isolde drops to one knee beside her son, her voice quavering. "Your uncle Teagan. He can help, Connor. Let him help."

"Can he, Mother?" Connor's voice is all adult smirk. "Can he, really?"

Isolde flinches, and that's _wrong_. He has never liked his brother's wife, but for all her sharp-tongued carping and blatant flirtation she has a spine of dwarf-forged steel. Something has broken that spine, something born of the cold amusement in Connor's voice, the too-adult _knowing_ in his voice, and so Teagan steps forward, firms his voice. "Now, Connor -"

The sunken eyes turn on him. "Stop, Uncle," that cold, too-knowing voice says, softly.

Power staggers him. _This is not Connor_, he has time to think, before an alien presence sinks icy claws into his mind. His thoughts turn gellid, fogged, crawling slow and disturbingly afraid.

"You could be amusing. Amuse me, Uncle. Make me laugh."

Teagan giggles and sweeps a jerky jongleur's bow. His muscles don't quite seem under his control, but that doesn't matter. Isolde is weeping, quiet broken sobs that streak her face with tears, and that doesn't matter either. He has to make his nephew laugh.

Somewhere deep inside, he is screaming.

8

* * *

_Thank you all for your reviews and feedback so far_. _The next part of this will be the Isolde/Teagan/Jowan confrontation over the whole blood magic thing. Any suggestions as to whose POV should feature there?_


End file.
